Daniel Craig promoting "Enduring Love" during the Toronto Film Festival. September 11, 2004.

© Armando Gallo / Retna Ltd CreativeCommons

18 Sexy Movies for Grown Women
Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for the last 45 years.
He is the author of 9 books, including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places,
Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and Mr. Mean: Saving Your
Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome . He offers counseling to men,
women, and couples in his office in California or by phone with people throughout
the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on Men’s Health and a
free subscription to Jed’s e-newsletter go to www.MenAlive.com. If you enjoy my
articles, please subscribe. I write to everyone who joins my Scribd team.

Sex can be wonderful, but it isn’t always easy. When we’re young, we get turned
on easily. We don’t need any external support. We just think about our partner
or a sexy image and we’re hot and bothered. But that feeling doesn’t last. As we
age we need additional stimulation. But how do we find erotica that we can
share? Here’s what Dr. Barb DePree founder of MiddleSexMD has to say.

As a general rule, women over 40 need more stimulation to become aroused

enough for good sex. When we were young, just thinking about making love with
our partners may have been enough to arouse us physically, but as we grow
older, as sex hormones decrease and distractions build, it takes more. But not
too much more. For some of us, reading a steamy novel will do it. For others,
visual stimulation works better. A hot movie, for instance.

Ever since I first conceived of MiddlesexMD, one of my goals has been to gather
a tasteful collection of erotica, visual and verbal art that will stimulate arousal in
older women. All we had to do is find it, right? How hard could that be?

None of us at MiddlesexMD had really explored the world of erotic art. So we set
our product buyer to work, buying up a sampling of the “state of the art,”
beginning with films. She studied and chose a good selection, from how-to films
to soft-boiled, story-centered erotic movies. We chose films targeted at women.
And films targeted at older women. As the DVDs piled up in our product room,
we decided to take an analytical approach to our selection.

Sort of analytical. We each invited a few girlfriends over for glass of wine, a
viewing and a discussion.

Our goal was to review these films to gather criteria and characteristics of films
that most appealed to our friends — some way to inform our buying choices for
the store. Which would they use? Which would they recommend to their friends
or watch with their partners? How would they rate them? What, specifically, did
they like about each? We had our notepads and our pens poised. We had
poured the wine, curled up in front of the TV… And then, showtime!
One film after another… fell flat on its face. We couldn’t watch more than a
minute or two of any of them without reaching for the eject button. There was no
analysis, no rating, no pulling apart criteria. We all… hated everything about all of
them.

And we were disappointed. Really? Does it all really have to be so awful? We

began again, discussing scenes in mainstream movies that we love, that work for
us. We could easily name dozens of scenes that made us blush just recalling
them. Scenes from The English Patient, A Room With a View, Breathless, 9 1/2
Weeks, Body Heat, The Piano, Atonement (Widescreen Edition), Shakespeare
in Love , The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The
Godfather , Sweet Land , The Graduate, Under the Tuscan Sun, Thief of Hearts ,
Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Moonstruck , anything with Daniel Craig in it. We
exhausted ourselves thinking of the scenes.

And what characteristics did these movies and scenes have that mattered to us?
The story is important, the emotions feel real. There is a buildup of passion,
tension, and release. The woman’s seduction receives detailed attention. In
short, there is romance.

What we didn’t like? Explicit sex. Mechanics. We really enjoy using our
imaginations to fill in, and are perfectly happy with closeups of rapt faces.

We learned a lot from each other that night. We learned, too, that among our
friends, at least, we’d all rather read a good sex scene than watch one.

How about you? Have you found tried-and-true erotica that works for you? What
do you like about it? Have you failed to find anything? What is it about the works
you’ve tried that doesn’t work for you?

Barb DePree, M.D. bio

I've been a physician providing women's healthcare since 1989. I had a

traditional obstretrics and gynecology practice for 17 years. Since 2006 my
practice has been devoted to midlife women, specifically providing gynecologic
care and helping women navigate the perimenopausal and menopausal years.
(It's tricky for some women, in case you hadn't noticed.)

One of the trickiest issues is women's sexual health. I realized that there are
multiple changes, common to many women at this stage of life, which result in
(sometimes unpleasant) changes in sexual function. But there weren't great
resources for women to access to learn more about it, or purchase products that
might help.

In April 2010, I launched an on-line business, MiddlesexMD.com to help women

enjoy sexuality for life, offering clinically sound information, practical advice, and
intimacy aids. Sexuality is so important to our relationships and our happiness --
my goal is to help women preserve that as we age.

To contact Dr. Jed Diamond, visit me at www.MenAlive.com